𝐒𝐮𝐦𝐦𝐞𝐫 | 𝐉𝐞𝐚𝐧 𝐊𝐢𝐫𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐢𝐧

𝐗𝐈𝐕 : 𝐀𝐩𝐨𝐥𝐨𝐠𝐢𝐞𝐬

Your answer came quickly. "Beautiful. It's hard to believe you're all finally all grown up."

Sunny squealed and wrapped her arms around you. "Thank you! You're the best sister a girl could ask for."

"God, you make me feel old," you mumbled over her shoulder. "Get out of here before Hitch beats down the door and deafens me with her yipping. Then, I'd feel even older."

Sunny gave one last smile before bolting from the room. As you watched your dress float in the air with her, you couldn't think of a better girl to wear it. Mrs. Springer would be pleased to see her daughter return with not one but two free dresses from your archives.

After putting away the beauty tools, you headed to the front door, hoping you had enough time to wave the coach off. You barely caught the carriage starting to roll down the road, with Hitch sticking her tongue out at you from the window. Marlowe waited behind, waving over his wife's shoulder.

You sent a silly face and a raised hand right back as dust clouded the air, only to flee inside when the air grew too hot, and your stomach growled too loud.

Unlike Sunny, you lacked the luxury of attending beautifully catered parties fully stocked with mountains of meat and pastries.

But one of the best parts about having a well-studied chef as an adoptive father was that you had access to more culinary knowledge than the average New Yorker. While everyone in town, except those visiting the Reiss' party, was eating the same dry corned beef hash, mostly burned fried fish, or bland boiled potatoes each afternoon, you enjoyed spoils from far-off lands in the comfort of your quiet, American home.

So, as you cracked your eggs into a deep well of flour, you considered the best uses for the garden's bountiful harvest. Some of the tomatoes appeared ripe enough for picking a few days ago. Niccolo's basil bush was lush with leaves and free of flowers. The garlic in the cellar would act as a delicious complement, as would the onions on the shelf beside them. There was also a loaf that would be too hard to eat in a few days.

Little hands wrinkled your skirt as you kneaded new dough.

"Y/n? It's so hot. Can we go swimming today?" Martin asked.

"Yes, but I should feed you first," you told him. "Would you like to help me make a little pasta?"

"Oh, yes!"

From there, Martin assisted you in every step. You taught him how to knead and explained the importance of letting the dough rest. When harvesting from the garden while the dough chilled in the cellar, you showed him which tomatoes were ripe and which were not. You let him oversee picking the basil, as it was hard for him to make a mistake. He mostly picked perfectly fragrant leaves, save a few aphid-chewed pickings.

You pulled a dining room chair to the counter for Martin to stand on as you taught him Niccolo's secret way of scoring and slicing onions. You were very clear that he should never touch a knife without supervision, but that didn't mean he couldn't learn the process early.

Martin might run his mouth often but was a wonderfully quiet sous chef.

You left him alone in the kitchen for no more than two minutes to fetch dough once it had sat for over an hour. Walking back up the cellar steps, you heard a loud yelp and a clatter. Adrenaline pumped through your veins as you flew back up to find Martin wincing in his chair. You hustled to him to see your knife tossed to the side and a little plume of red pooling on the tip of his thumb.

"Ow!" Martin cried as you took his hand. "I was just trying to make the onion smaller! I just wanted to help!"

"Martin, I told you not to touch... to touch..."